A speculative mind

  Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi is a reworking of a 1962 novel by H. Bean Piper called Little Fuzzy . Scalzi says it is not a sequel, but to think of it more like a reboot, like the Star Trek reboot movies. I confess that I have not read the original Piper novel. Does that mean I shouldn’t be reviewing it without having read the original? After all, it was probably intended for fans of the original, just like the Star Trek reboot was intended for fans of the original series. Right? Meh. I would imagine that people who had never seen the original Star Trek did watch the reboot. They either liked it or they didn’t based on their own perceptions and how good the movie was. The same is true with this book. Not having read the original, I can only assume that it must follow a similar outline to this one, but Scalzi has put his own stylistic stamp on it. The hero (Holloway) is a typical Scalzi hero, witty, irreverent, sarcastic, and one who suffers no fools. One whose attitude frequently

  I thought I would make a list of the most important science fiction novels. But I had to define for myself what most important meant to me. These are works that were influential either to other works or to society. Or they were the first of their kind or the first variation of their kind. This list is entirely my opinion. There is nothing quantifiable that makes something more important than something else, so we are left with the imperfect analyses from imperfect humans. Also, I have not read every great science fiction book, so the list will be limited to what I have read.     Frankenstein , Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (1818) Let’s start with the one that started it all. There were other speculative fiction stories before Frankenstein, some going all the way back to the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen (Thor was not an invention by Marvel Comics). But I would argue that Frankenstein was the first truly modern science fiction novel. It really checks the boxes of modern science fict

  It is difficult to know what people really looked like before photography was invented. All we have are verbal accounts and portraits from artists. Verbal accounts are unreliable and subject to interpretation. I have seen movies made from books and found inevitably that the actor or actress playing a given character looks nothing like I pictured in my head from reading the book, even if the actor fit the general description. Artist depictions are also suspect. Even the best artist rendering can be deceiving (we well know that even photographs can mislead). The artist may have had a motive to make the subject look as good as they could, maybe even better than reality. Consider the portrait of Anne of Cleves. King Henry VIII was looking for a wife after the death of his third wife, Jane Seymore. Anne of Cleves was suggested to him as a suitable candidate (from a good protestant family). But he had never seen her. Henry sent the artist Hans Holbein off to paint a portrait of Anne and